4.8 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 20 September 2022
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Pamela Hargan and her daughter Helen were found dead in their home in McLean, Virginia, the victims of an apparent murder-suicide, in July 2017. Once police investigated further, they realized that the crime scene had been staged and this was a homicide that they were looking at. Eventually, police narrowed it down to one prime suspect - Pamela’s oldest daughter Megan.
In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and Jackie Howard discuss how the police realized the crime scene was staged, the significance of where the gun was found, blood spatter patterns, how they came to suspect Pamela’s oldest daughter Megan, and much more.
Show Notes:
0:00 - Intro
1:32 - Background and overview of the case
3:35 - How did the police know that the crime scene had been staged?
7:05 - The significance of the location where the gun was found
10:08 - The forces of gravity and homicide v. suicide investigations
15:45 - Gunshot residue
19:30 - Blood spatter pattern
25:20 - After recreating the crime scene, what did they discover about Pamela’s death?
29:55 - What happens when someone is shot in the head?
34:30 - Pamela’s oldest daughter, Megan, is charged with the murder
38:35 - Megan’s phone call to her boyfriend
40:00 - After the police realized the crime scene was staged, how did they start investigating the case as a homicide?
44:25 - Wrapping up and final details of the case
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0:00.0 | Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. |
0:19.9 | Your parent that works hard, I mean weary to the bone heart day after day to try to make |
0:28.0 | a life for yourself. You finally reached that point in your life where you're rolling |
0:34.0 | through your sixties and you think that all is right with the world. You've provided |
0:40.2 | a home, you've got your kids kind of in a position where they can take care of themselves |
0:45.4 | and you want to enjoy life. But one of the oldest motives in the world begins to kind of |
0:54.0 | sneak in to your family circle. They used to refer to it as the green-eyed monster. It's |
1:01.4 | the idea of greed and jealousy wanting to possess those things that you haven't worked |
1:07.6 | for throughout your life but you want them given to you and you want them given to you |
1:11.8 | now. Even at the expense of the ones that you supposedly love. Today we're going to |
1:18.3 | talk about a staged murder suicide in McLean, Virginia. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this |
1:28.0 | is Body Bags. Jackie Howard, executive producer for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace is joining |
1:38.4 | me. Jackie I got to tell you when you walk onto a scene when you've got more than one |
1:45.9 | body. There's always this little voice in the back of your head as an investigator where |
1:51.1 | you're thinking, you know, I got to make sure that I get this right because as bad as homicide |
1:58.3 | is in its singular form, when you've got two people that have died, you know that you're |
2:07.0 | walking into an environment that has just been occupied by fear and total violence that someone |
2:13.9 | would bring about the deaths of two individuals. And you begin to think about all kinds of things. |
2:19.7 | This is suicide. Is this a homicide? Is this a double homicide? Do you have a madman running |
2:26.2 | around out in neighborhoods somewhere? Because you know the public. They hear this. It gets out |
2:31.4 | there. They want to know that they feel safe. And in McLean, Virginia, you know, it's not known |
2:37.6 | for a huge crime right there. Now people want to feel safe and when the police rolled up to |
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